10 Things That Almost Completely Changed GTA History

7. Everything Was Almost A Lot Bigger

The franchise is inevitably praised for its scoope, and one of the chief selling factors of GTA V was that the open world is more open and more worldy than ever before, thanks to a significant size increase in the playable areas. But, if the original plans for both GTA IV and San Andreas had come to light, the worlds would have been even bigger. In San Andreas the setting was to be much bigger and had several different land masses, including a bigger San Fierro (which was a lot more like San Francisco), including a small island off the coast in the bay, which was most likely based on Alcatraz. For a look at the full beta map head to the Lil' Probe'Inn or Mike Toreno's Ranch, where it can be seen on a wall in both cases. And GTA IV originally included areas called Anger Bay (based on Pelham Bay), Norfolk (NoHo), Jefferson Heights (Hamilton Heights), Acter Bay (South Kearny), Richmond (Richmond Hill) , Frogtown (Turtle Bay), and Washington Heights which were all cut. Additionally, two more neighbourhoods, Hedgebury and Goatherd were either cut or renamed at the last minute, but are visible on roadsigns in the game. Even more importantly, it seems that the game area was going to be enormously bigger, as the setting was originally to be Liberty State, including the countryside around Liberty City and mountains. So, we could have had one of GTA V's chief selling points earlier, if Rockstar hadn't made such major cuts.